OKLAHOMA CITY – A little more than 115,000 inactive and duplicate voter registrations were removed recently from Oklahoma’s voter rolls, State Election board Secretary Paul Ziriax announced.
The biennial purge was routine and mandated by state statute, said Ziriax (pronounced ZEER-icks). Removal of inactive and duplicate voter registrations is “a thorough, multi-step process the State Election Board is required by law to conduct every two years,” he said.
The process removed 110,973 inactive voter registrations and 4,034 duplicate voters, Ziriax said. That included 9,196 inactive voter registrations and 191 duplicate voter registrations from southwest Oklahoma, ledgers reflect.
The law that mandates the voter list maintenance process has been in place for decades and includes “clear guidelines” for which voter registrations must be removed, Ziriax said.
“Oklahoma’s voter list maintenance process … has been conducted in essentially the same manner since the mid-1990s,” he said. “Maintaining clean and updated voter rolls protects our democracy by making it far more difficult for someone to use outdated voter lists to attempt to commit fraud or disrupt our elections.”
Duplicate registrations that were deleted matched newer registrations by the same person at a new address.
Inactive registrations that were removed were for voters who failed to confirm their address in 2017 and then had no voter activity through the 2020 General Election. (The 2017 Address Confirmation Notices were sent to some voters for one of several reasons required by law, including those who surrendered an Oklahoma driver’s license upon being issued a new one in another state, or who were identified as a potential duplicate of a voter registration in another county or state, or who had no voter activity from the 2014 General Election through the 2016 General Election, or a first-class mailing from the Election Board was returned as “undeliverable”.)
Ziriax cautioned Oklahomans about misinformation about the voter list maintenance process.
“Be wary of misinformation that is sometimes spread online and on social media about voter list maintenance, Ziriax said. “The fact is that voter list maintenance is not a new process. It is not partisan. It is a routine, necessary part of election administration, and it is required by law.”
Removal of inactive voters is a clearly defined and lengthy process, Ziriax related.
- First, a voter is sent an address confirmation mailing for one of seven reasons required by law.
- Next, the voter must simply confirm his/her address. If the voter fails to confirm the address, then the voters is designated “inactive”. (An “inactive” voter is still a registered voter and is still eligible to vote. A voter is return to “active” status automatically by voting or by making changes to his/her voter registration.
- Finally, a voter who is designated as “inactive” for failing to confirm his/her address can be removed from the voter rolls only if there is no voter activity for two consecutive general-election cycles after becoming inactive.
In addition to the biennial, statutory voter list maintenance of inactive and duplicate voter registrations, county election boards continually update voter rolls by removing voters who have died, have registered in another state or county, or who are convicted of a felony.
In a related matter, both houses of the Legislature approved Senate Bill 710, which would authorize the State Election Board secretary to join a multistate voter registration database at a cost of $350,000. The primary intent is to find names on Oklahoma’s voter rolls of people who may be dead or moved out of state.
SB 710, by Sen. Darcy Jech, R-Kingfisher, was transmitted to the Governor on April 20.